


Don't Go Back to Boston

by Inspirationalmisquotes



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben solo is a cinnamon roll, Eventual Romance, F/M, Mobster AU, Rey is a journalist, Roadtrip, Roman Holiday, author doesn't actually know anything about organized crime, fugitives au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-05 21:14:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17926493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inspirationalmisquotes/pseuds/Inspirationalmisquotes
Summary: Ben and Rey go on the lam together.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Just a prologue. Enjoy <3

It all happens very fast.

Rey is certain no one has ever been brought to a mob boss to be congratulated on their top-notch investigative reporting, so she figures this is probably the end.

They take her phone and her notepad. Which feels pretty damning.

But still, there's time. There's a chance.

“Ben?” the word scrapes her throat on the way out. Rey reaches for him. "You don't have to do this. There's good in you. I know there is."

“Hands.” he holds out a zip tie, his face blank. It’s hard now to imagine he ever smiled at her. Twice.

Now would be the time for a clever, last-minute, Macgyver-style getaway, but Rey doesn’t have any ideas.

The rasp of plastic sounds like a guillotine.

Ben and his-- she can’t think of any word for them other than ‘henchmen,’ she’ll have to come up with something better for the expose she might not live long enough to publish-- lead her to a condemned parking garage, which Rey think is a little cliche, and she would tell him so if she could actually form words. She’s so scared she can hardly breathe.

There she meets Snoke. He looks exactly how Ben described him. Pale, gnarled and sinewy, weighed down with kitchy gold jewelry and garbed in a heinous, ill-fitting gold track-suit. Rey kneels with her knees digging painfully into the wet concrete, her feet falling asleep as Snoke paces and monologues and waxes-poetic about… the mob? Something to do with the mob? Rey isn’t sure. She can’t actually see straight at this point. She never knew fear could actually _blur your vision._

Learn something new every day.

Rey tries her best not to look at Ben. She tries her best to pay attention. Just in case she does survive this, she’d better be able to make a half-decent story out of it.

It all comes to a head when Snoke makes the fatal mistake of handing the gun off to Ben, and saying something vague and terrifying about “fulfilling his destiny.”

Her skull feels like an empty shell. Her brains must be blown out over the concrete by now.

But then she hears the gunshot, and it’s not her who hits the ground.

She feels Ben’s hand under her elbow, hauling her to her feet. There’s the snap of a penknife splitting the ties on her wrists.

“We’ve got to go.”


	2. he said 'darling who're you praying to, is anybody answering you'

“Where are we going?” Rey heaves herself into the passenger's seat, shaking so hard her teeth rattle in her skull.

Ben doesn’t answer. He climbs in after her and closes the door and jams the key in the ignition. The world spins sideways as he skids out into the alleyway.

Rey doesn’t know Boston. Before last month, she’d never been so far North in her life. The cold is brutal. She curls back into her seat and shivers and strains to breath normally, honing in on the blur of snow and salt-caked asphalt in the glow of the headlights.

“You okay?”

She jumps. “Oh. Yes. Are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.” the word feels flimsy.

Ben doesn’t say anything, and she’s glad.

Rey flips down the visor and looks at herself in the mirror. The front of her shirt is stretched thin over an ugly blue mark on her collarbone. Her skin smarts all over, like her whole body has been snapped with a rubber band. Her right side feels prickly, hot and cold all at once, and the joints in her toes click painfully when she moves them.

She can’t remember much of what happened after Ben shot Snoke, but it feels like wild horses dragged her ten miles over barbed wire and gravel. She knows there was a scuffle. She thinks she hit someone in the face with her purse, like some sassy, jaded, no-nonsense broad in a black and white movie. Her finest hour, really. And her knuckles are bruised, so something happened _there_.

Ben glances over at her. “Sure you’re okay? Do you need to stop somewhere?” he says, and winces again. He has a one-handed, white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

“No, I’m fine.” Rey leans forward and sees a dark stain covering the left side of his shirt. “Have you been shot?” she asks, conversationally.

His grip in the steering wheel shifts, but he doesn’t tear his eyes away from the road. “Sort of.”

“If you’re hurt, I should be driving. How bad is it?”

“Not that bad.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I’m a fast driver. Don’t worry about it.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see in ten minutes.”

Out the window, the landscape blurs into a blank canvas of snow. The sky is a bleak spread of dark blue and purple, like one great bruise, with a single thread of light gleaming on the horizon. They drive for ages. It’s longer than ten minutes.

Ben takes them out of the city to a shoddy snow-heaped suburb that’s little more than a jumble of one-story buildings, spanning in an uneven patchwork of townships and farmland along the river.

“Why are we here?” she asks.

“Two reasons.” says Ben. “Hux and the rest of the Order are going to be watching the main roads; that means Route Five isn’t safe.” His hand creeps down to his side. “And I know a guy in the country. He’s taken a few bullets out of my old Agent. May be willing to patch me up.”

“Oh. Are you dying?”

“Guess we’ll find out.” he says, in that same deadpan tone he uses when he says ‘no comment’.

“Does it… hurt?”

“What, this?” he holds up the hand that was just clasping his side, and even in the weak morning light Rey can see the red stain on his palm.

She presses her lips together and observes, “That is pretty bad.”

“You don’t say.”

“Who are we going to see?”

They veer off into a badly-paved alleyway that drops into a steep decline between two one-story buildings.

“His name is DJ.” Says Ben, sucking his teeth as he undoes his seatbelt. “He’s a shady guy who takes bullets out of other shady people and gets paid for it. Any other questions?”

“Yes.” says Rey, climbing out of the car with him. “Where are we going after that?”

“Away.”

He seems fairly steady on his feet. As he walks around the front of the car, Rey sees the stain soaking through his shirt, caking around a gap in the fabric, leaving long rills of red down the leg of his jeans.

She follows him up the ramp to the front of the building. It looks like somewhere that sells insurance. Staid and inconspicuous. The room inside is low-ceilinged, boarded with dark imitation wood and reeking of sherry and cigarettes.

“Hey, DJ.” Ben calls to a dark hallway behind the empty reception desk. “Did you get my message?”

“You look like hell.” A soft, nasally voice emerges from the shadows before DJ does. He dwarfs  
Ben by at least a foot. He’s shifty-eyed and boxy, topped with stiff brown hair and a plain blue baseball cap. His eyes sweep over Ben mechanically, then flick over to Rey. “Who’s the girl?”

“My fiancé. We’re thinking April.” says Ben sarcastically, before she even opens her mouth.  
“Who do you think she is?”

Rey recognizes the implication seconds after DJ does. He nods and motions them away into a shadowy corridor. Rey decided then she doesn’t much care if Ben dies here on the floor of this abandoned office building, and, she tells him so. He just laughs and tells her she’ll get her payback in a few minutes.

He isn’t kidding.

“Jesus Christ!” Ben shouts as Rey douses his side in alcohol. “What are you trying to do? Burn it shut?”

“DJ said to!” says Rey, defensively. “Didn’t you?”

DJ says nothing. He’s preoccupied, rifling through the cupboards beneath the makeshift operating table.

Ben curses again, smearing away the excess alcohol dripping down into the waistband of his jeans. “Just help him find the tongs.”

“Found them.” Says DJ, emerging from beneath the table with a truly terrifying array of metal instruments in-hand.

“Hang on.” Ben leans forwards, cheeks paling with the effort. “You don’t have any other clients here, do you?”

“No."

“DJ. Do you have any other clients?”

“No.”

Ben’s teeth dig into his lip. His eyes squeeze shut. “Rey,” he says, “Go wait in the lobby.”

“Can’t.” says DJ. He’s standing by the sink, dousing the operating tools with liquor from a cheap plastic bottle. “I’m going to need her help.”

Ben looks murderous, like always, but he’s especially terrifying now. “No, I don’t think you do.” he says. “I’m not paying you to—”

“Ben,” Rey presses him back onto the table by his good shoulder. She hasn’t known him long-- little less than three weeks-- but still long enough to know better than to risk Ben losing his temper. He’s a different person when he’s angry. It’s “It’s alright. I want to help.”

DJ hands him a cap-full of small white pills. “It’s all I have.”

“What, no Infant-cold medicine on-hand?” But he downs the pills dry anyway. Then he lies face-down on the wooden table, cheek against the wadded remains of his shirt.

The surgery is surprisingly bloodless. He curses and bites down on his shirt-collar and doesn’t let out a breath until the final stitch is tied off—but the bullet is tiny, fragmented into only three pieces, shallow and easy to remove. It’s just to the right of his shoulder blade on his left side, in a long bloody skid mark tracing down to just above his hip. It barely nicked one of his ribs and missed everything vital. When DJ pulls out the last piece, Ben lets out a choked-off groan that may have been a scream if Rey weren’t there to witness it.

Without pausing to think it through, she reaches down and sinks her fingers into his hair. It’s impossibly soft, thick and black and feathery, but tacky with sweat, and she immediately resists the urge to wipe her hand off on her jeans. Ben’s breathing slows, and the shoulder DJ is currently digging into with the tongs relaxes only slightly.

DJ sews him up quickly and trims the stitches with tiny scissors. He wraps Ben’s lower back and side in thick, waxy gauze. Rey lets out a breath when the last of the blood has been wiped away.  
At last, DJ orders him off the table and makes a gesture for payment. He accepts his fistful of crumpled bills and shuffles out of the room, closing the door behind him. It’s an awkward, stilted, and spastic departure. He mutters to himself and stumbles. Rey doesn’t know what to make of him. She stares after him until Ben reaches over and snatches the bottle of liquor she hadn’t realized she was still holding with a, “Give me that,” and tips it straight up.

He looks awful; ashen-faced and clammy, even paler than usual, with bruises under his eyes and patches of sweat on his cheekbones. Pitiful, sickly, and not in the least bit attractive.

Rey takes the bottle from him afterwards. Her head is spinning and she’s shaking almost as badly as he is. The liquor burns the back of her throat, and she coughs mid-sip, so that half of it drizzles down her chin.

“You look a little pale.” his voice is hoarse, as if he’s been screaming this whole time and not lying silently face-down on the table. “We should probably get you out of here.”

“Are… you sure?” Rey wants nothing more than to leave, but Ben looks like he might collapse before they reach the parking lot.

He smacks his lips. “Oh, yeah. DJ is not at all safe to be around. Kind of a high-functioning sociopath.”

“That’s a joke, right?” but she’s already gathering their belongings; a shredded jacket and a half-empty bottle of liquor.

He gives her a look.

“Alright, let’s get out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Come hang out with me on tumblr at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/inspirationalmisquotes


	3. and you think my bruised knees are sorta pretty

He’s terrifying.

Hulking. Menacing. He almost hits his head on the doorway when he shoulders his way inside the cafe, hands in the pockets of the obligatory but cliche battered leather jacket, hair ruffled from the wind, scowling suspiciously at nothing in particular.

From her little table in the corner, Rey raises her hand and waves. Well. She doesn’t actually wave, but her hands are shaking so hard it looks like it.

Solo catches sight of her and jerks his chin in acknowledgement. He crosses the cafe and sits down across from her, sizing her up, and Rey resists the urge to reach for the mace in the pocket of her windbreaker.

“You’re Ray Niima?” he sounds incredulous, and suspicious, and maybe a little accusatory.

Rey tries to swallow. “That’s me.” her voice is just a little too pitched. Too chipper.

His eyes drag over her like he can see clear through to her soul. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I’m Rey” She pulls out her notepad.

“Jesus.”

“Let’s get started.” she knows already she’s being too bright, too bubbly, too obnoxiously effervescent. She looks down at her list of questions, color-coordinated and highlighted with little smiley-faced post-it notes, and suddenly forgets every word in the English language.

“Relax, Kid.” he says, bluntly. “I’m not going to kill you.”

She gives a breathy, startled laugh, and knocks over her lemonade.

 

***

 

“We have to ditch the car.” Says Ben. There’s thick gauze poking out from under the collar of his t-shirt; a clean one. They’d stopped at a thrift store a few miles back. Rey had guessed his sizes and returned to their stolen car with a bag full of clean clothing, two cartons of orange juice from the next-door convenience store, and a bottle of heavy-duty painkillers.

On impulse, she’d bought two cheap rings from the display case while the woman at the counter was checking her out.

“It makes more sense for a married couple to be travelling together.” She’d explained to him later, presenting him with a lightweight brass ring and showing him her left hand. Her ring was a thin strip of silver with a butterfly gemstone.

Ben had looked her over appraisingly, for a moment so condescending and superior, he may as well have been calling her ‘sweet-cheeks’ and gnashing a cigar between his teeth. “Well…” his strange, nasal, oddly familiar voice breaks mid-syllable with unrepressed amusement. “You sure know a lot about being a fugitive.”

“I could teach a class.”

“Uh-huh. These don’t even match. They look fake. Yours is something an eight-year-old would wear.” But he’d put it on, anyway.

Ben had insisted that they needed to change cars now that someone had seen them in the old one. They’d parked the old car in an empty space in the front lot and started browsing for an upgrade in a rental company in the Boston suburbs that was closed on Sundays.

It’s one of those things that makes you feel guiltier the more you try to justify it, so Rey doesn’t try. She just sulks around at his heels, occasionally voicing her dissent and making suggestions when she finds one that’s a pretty color. He doesn’t seem to think the color should be a priority.

“Listen, I know cars.” says Rey. “A fifty year old Kia would get us across state lines. And that’s as far as we need to get before it’s time to trade in anyway. Just pick one so we can find somewhere to sleep. You’re not in any condition to drive anyway.”

He ignores her, testing the handle of a Camry. “Just trust me.” he says. “I deal with this kind of stuff all the time.”

“Yes, but you’re bad at it.” says Rey. “That’s why you’re on the run with me instead of the new mob boss.”

She’s baiting him, and he knows it, but that doesn’t mean he’s above taking it. He turns to face her, hand braced against a million-year-old Camry, and gestures. With the crowbar.

“I left all that to save your scrawny, ungrateful ass.” he says. “And _you_ \--” he crowds her up against the hood, “-- promised me anonymity. And immunity.”

“I promised you the front page.” Rey wishes she had gum to snap, or a pen to click. She’s used to sources getting too close. But it doesn’t usually make her this anxious.

It doesn’t usually make her this _wet_.

“And hell if I didn’t deliver.”

For a moment, he towers over her, glowering, pretty mouth twisted in a legitimately terrifying smirk.

In a moment of panic, Rey grabs for the crowbar, only half-playfully, and prays if she misses, he’ll thinks it’s enchanting.

Because Ben is nothing short of terrifying when he’s truly angry.

She does miss, of course. Her nails clack over the metal and he jerks it out of her reach.

The façade breaks apart and Ben snickers, slinging the crowbar around the back of his neck like a baseball bat.

Her heart stalls and her thighs squeeze together.

He walks around to the drivers side and Rey totters after him, feeling more than a little weak in the knees. Deep down, she knows he won’t hurt her. Not after everything. Not after weeks of secret rendezvous and interviews and genuine moments of fledgling friendship.

They’ve shared Twinkies. They’re practically soul-bound.

He moves in circles around the car, considering it, and again she’s amazed he’s still able to walk.  
It’s possible he’s just showing off and trying to recover from his earlier display of vulnerability—not that he was particularly vulnerable, growling and cursing the whole way through the surgery. For him, though, it must have been humbling.

“This will get us to Pennsylvania, at least.” he says.

Rey doesn’t argue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm on tumblr at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/inspirationalmisquotes


	4. cause i've done my part for twelve years now / and i can't seem to get through

Rey starts talking to Ben in November.

He’s anonymous. That’s non-negotiable. And he’s only talking to her. Rey agrees to his terms before she knows what they are. He’s the source of a lifetime. Rey would give him a kidney if he asked for it.

It’s tradition to meet in dark, smoky alleyways and crummy roadside diners, but Boston is fucking freezing, so instead she has him over to her apartment and they sit on the heat register by the windows. Rey makes him a cup of the Earl Gray she keeps on hand especially for him. They snack and chat and he gives her information.

“He’s getting testy.” Ben reports, breaking a frozen thin-mint in half and tossing it into his mouth. “I think he knows someone’s talking to the cops.”

“I’m not the cops.”

“No, but you’re talking to them, and I’m talking to you. He doesn’t know it’s me, though.”

“Well that’s what matters.” Rey clicks her pen. “What’s new on the waterfront?”

“Don’t try to talk code, kid, it throws me off.” he holds out a thin-mint, and without thinking, she cranes her neck and closes her teeth around it.

“Nothing’s new.” he says, soft lips quirked in a Mona-Lisa smile as she rocks back and wriggles her slipper-sock feet between the gaps in the heat register. “It’s been a slow week.”

“What about those guys they found under the bridge?” she asks.

“Two guys is a slow week.”

“ _Oh._ ”

For a moment, Ben looks vaguely sympathetic. He never can seem to get totally on-board with her, feeling sorry that anyone has died. It’s more like he feels sorry for her, having to carry such a tiresome, inconvenient burden as human empathy.

“You’ve got a lot to learn, Nancy Drew.” he says, after a while.

“I’ve always considered myself more of a Kay Tracey.”

“Cute.”

“I’ve always thought so.”

 

***

 

After a day of driving, they stumble across a little bar on the outskirts of a no-name town with a few empty rooms in the flat above. It’s a hole-in-the-wall kind of place.  
The two of them stand in the corner at a card table with no chairs. Every time someone knocks into Ben, he flinches.

“How are you still conscious?” Rey wonders aloud. Then, as an afterthought, “How are you still drinking?”

Ben looks at her like this must be a trick question. He gestures to himself. “Solo?” he says, like this should be an explanation on its own.

“Not everyone has heard of your father.”

“Wish I was so lucky.” He says, and polishes off the rest of his drink.

When they’d first arrived, he’d ordered for her. “You know what’s more conspicuous than getting water in a place like this?”

“No, what?”

“Not much. You’re getting bourbon. I’ll finish it if you can’t.”

Maybe it’s years of malnourishment, coupled with relative abstinence late into her teens, but Rey has never been able to handle alcohol in any small amount. But he doesn’t need to know that.  
She’s torn between letting Ben know she can’t finish it and letting him know how drunk she’ll get off half what he’s put away with a fresh gunshot wound.

So she takes little drop-sized sips, like a kitten lapping cream.

“We’ll wake up early tomorrow,” says Ben, after a moment. “Take off before the usual crowd does. Drive as far as Maryland, then we’ll find somewhere safe to stop. I have contacts out West, Hux will be expecting me to go there.”

“Will they really chase us that far?” Rey feels a twinge of anxiety. She has her deadlines to think of.

“Hux will.” Ben looks grim. “If it were anyone else, I might get off easy.”

“When can I go back?”

“Honey, you might want to find yourself a new city.”

“Well, I’m not going to.” she actually tosses her hair.

If it is possible to _fondly_ scoff, that’s what Ben does.

“Are we going to stay here?”

“We can.” he shrugs one shoulder, on his good side. “It’s no Bed and Breakfast.”

“I’ll manage.” says Rey, haughtily. She’s spent her share of time in seedy motels and places like this, where you have to check the beds for bugs and the closets for dead hookers.

“I probably only have enough cash on me for one room.”

“Don’t be such a boy scout.” she says. “We can share.”

He smirks and flags down the bartender.

The only available room at ‘the Benbrook Lounge,’ is a little ‘suite’ above the front entrance.  
There’s one bed, small enough to be a child’s, sunken in the middle with a single cotton blanket.

“You can get the first shower.” Ben says, kicking off his shoes and sitting down on the bed.  “I’ll wait until tomorrow. Shouldn’t get my shoulder wet this soon.”

“Okay.” Rey wrings her fingers in the hem of her dress— it’s second-hand, one of the jumpers she’d picked up just a few hours ago. The zipper is midway down her back.

“Ben?” she says, after a moment's hesitation.

“Hm?” His head rests against the headboard, chin tilted up under the blinking neon of the lights outside.

“Can you unzip me?”

He doesn’t open his eyes, but the corner of his mouth quirks up. “C’mere.” he says.

Rey sits down on the edge of the bed, facing the door. There’s a soft, warm pressure between her shoulder blades as he pulls the zipper all the way down.

“Sure this is okay?” he mumbles.

Her heart skips. “What?”

“Sharing a bed with a criminal.”

Rey tries to brush it off, standing up and walking over to the bathroom with her dress sleeves drooping around her shoulders. “You were just shot. What could you do to me?”

His laugh reverberates around the little room as she pulls the door shut between them.

As soon as the door is closed, Rey peels off the rest of her dress, steps into the pastel tub, and turns on the water. It’s cold. She had guessed it might be. The complimentary soap falls apart in her hands, dissolving into thick clumps that leave a film on her skin. She scrubs it off with her nails as best she can. There are no towels to dry off with, so she uses her old dress.

Rey puts on a clean, dry slip without buttons or zippers and brushes her teeth. She looks in the grimy mirror above the sink, pinches her cheeks, and combs her fingers through her hair.

When she comes out of the bathroom, Ben is still sprawled across the bed, but the way the blanket is rumpled makes her think he at least tried to get under it.

Dust from the sagging floorboards sticks to her feet as she crosses over to the bedside. She turns off the light and wrestles the blanket out from under him. She tosses it over their legs.

Rey props her back up against the headboard and looks down at him.

The streetlight outside casts an orange glow around his face, emphasizing hollows in his sunken cheeks like a halo. He looks tired and sick. Not so handsome as usual.

Not handsome at all, really. At the moment, he looks downright average. It makes him seem like a real person, somehow, like he wasn’t entirely himself when he was well-groomed, and he’s just now fully formed. Rey sort of likes it.

“How long has it been since you took those painkillers?”

“Couple hours.” he says. “It’s fine.”

There’s something horribly awkward about this situation. Not that they’re sharing a bed. It’s that that’s making this entire trip bearable.

But he’s just been shot. He smells like stale sweat and rubbing alcohol. He’s thrown up twice in the past hour and still downed twice the recommended dosage of pain medicine. Sex would probably be impossible at this point, and if it were, Rey still wouldn’t want to have sex with him.  
But knowing that they can’t makes her uncomfortable.

It comes down to this— she likes to look at him. She likes when he looks at her. There’s nothing more to it. Or there shouldn’t be.

“Want to hear a joke?” he says, after a while.

“No.”

“So, a salesman, a farmer, and a cleric all walk into a bar—”

“Why would a cleric be drinking?”

“I don’t know, maybe he’s been in a car with you for the past five hours.” says Ben, without opening his eyes.

“Clever.”

“I know. Can I finish my joke now?”

“No. I am going to sleep.”

“So, a cleric, a salesman, and a doctor all walk into a bar—”

“I thought it was a farmer.”

“Forget it.” He says, but there’s no snap to his voice. He sighs, shifts against the mattress to make room for her, and stretches out his good arm above the pillow.

Usually, Rey sleeps on my stomach, but there’s hardly room for that now. She tries to crunch her body into as small a shape as possible, nestled close to him with her nose brushing the front of his shirt. They’re as close to each other as they can be without actually touching.

“Goodnight Ben.” She hadn’t meant to sound so shy.

“Night, Kid.” he says.

 

***

 

Rey wakes up to a banging on the door letting them know it’s time to get out. Ben groans as she rolls off the bed, aching and sore, with her head pounding and her sinuses raw from the dust in the air.

“Thirty dollars even.” says a voice from outside in the hallway.

It takes Rey a few moments to realize that he’s talking about the money they owe him. Slinging her arm over Ben, she reaches into the pocket of his ruined jacket for the money.

His hand shoots out and seizes her wrist. After a moment, his eyes open, and he grumbles an apology before dredging the cash from his pocket.

Rey answers the tetchy middle-aged man rapping at the door and relays the money to him. He counts it, pockets the change, and tells her to get out before ten.  
Rey turns to go back inside. Ben is sitting up, feet on the floor, thumb grinding circles into his temple.

“We have to move,” She says, sitting down on the bed, “Here, let me help. I’ll redo your bandages.”

He shrugs out of his ruined jacket.

Afterwards, they gather their things and head downstairs. Ben talks up the off-duty bartender, playing the part of a genial, law-abiding roadster. He matches the local dialect perfectly, even casting in a few hokey dad-jokes and cliche expressions to top it all off. The bartender gives them directions, and they leave arm and arm like the starry-eyed newlyweds they’re pretending to be.

They’re back on the road before the rain starts.

The clouds make the winter sky look wrinkled along the horizon, like crumpled blue wrapping paper. They stop only once, to refuel and get breakfast. Rey gets a coffee, even though she doesn’t like it, because American tea is worse than no tea at all.

To keep her from fiddling with the radio, Ben gives her his wallet to look through. “There,” he says, dropping it into her lap and swatting her hand away from the knob. “Think I have some pictures in there.”

Most of what she finds is generic; receipts and metro tickets and the odd single. There’s a library card wedged between two fake IDs. Behind that is a photo of him in a baseball cap, standing next to an earnest-looking woman with iron-gray hair in an elaborate up-do.

“Who’s she?” she asks.

He glances over her shoulder, adjusting his one-handed grip on the wheel. “My Mom.” he says, shortly. “Last Christmas.”

“Oh. She’s beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you see her often?”

Ben doesn’t answer. Something in the air changes, and Rey realizes the interview is over. She puts the picture away and stares out the window.

They drive in silence for another mile or so. When she reaches for the radio again, he threatens to make her walk back to Boston.

Rey is discovering that Ben is not quite the person she’d thought he was. It’s not exactly that he’s better or worse. He’s just different. In interviews, he’d been aggressive, talkative, electric, almost boisterous. In person, his voice is so quiet she has to ask him to repeat things two or three times. She’s always known him to be argumentative, and the two of them argue plenty— but he’s less showy about it now, less playfully competitive. Their arguments go in circles. Which roads to take, when to stop, when it’s time to switch cars. Around and around until Rey isn’t even sure what they’re fighting about anymore—all she knows is she wants to win.

“Hey Kid,” he says, “Could you look at the map and tell me where we are?”

She opens the glove compartment and digs out a map. Her fingernails skim over the zig-zagging path they’ve traveled so far. “Nowhere.” she says, definitely, after a moment of careful examination.

He seems satisfied with this.

Out her window, Rey can see a tiny scattering of streetlights in a sea of wiry grass—the first signs of a civilization they’ve seen in miles.

“We should take this road here.” she says. “I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat.”

Ben gives in without argument, which probably means things are bad. He made them stop again this morning so he could throw up.

They follow the road into a place that seems to be more of one extended road-stop than a town. The houses are softly shaped pastel, like swirls of cake frosting, and nearly every window is laden with wind chimes, dream catchers, and angel figurines.

“How about here?” Rey picks out a tiny diner that boasts free coffee via rustic wooden sign. He pulls into the lot and parks without argument. She doesn’t realize how loud the engine is until he shuts it off. They’ll have to trade in for another one soon.

“You look awful.” Rey reaches out and brush his cheek with the back of her hand. When he doesn’t stop her, she rubs out a spot of dust. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

Rey helps drag him out of the driver’s seat, cursing his name on every exhale, until he finally staggers out, clutching his side.

“Sure it’s just grazed?” She says, more out of spite than anything else. She’s seen the wound; she’s the one who helped him change his bandages last, along with a gas-station first-aid kit and a ‘borrowed’ canteen of gin from the man who worked there.

They go up the ramp. The inside of the diner is a talcum-powdered monstrosity, complete with paper flowers and fairy-lights winding like tendrils of ivy over every surface. There are staticky carols playing somewhere in the background and a ratty plastic shrub on the lunch counter that she assumes is meant to be a Christmas tree. The hostess gives them vague directions about seating themselves. They pick a booth way in the back, a safe distance away from the man assembling a castle out of paper cups and the woman crying into her coffee.

Ben wraps his arm around her for balance as they settle into their booth. The bench cushions are cleaved on both sides, seeping foam padding. The table is set only with a pile of sugar packets and a lone salt-shaker missing the cap.

Rey slides in opposite him and starts stacking sugar packets into a tower while he scrolls through old messages on his comm chip.

Their waitress is early-fifties, with kind eyes and glitter caked into her tear ducts. She brings them paper menus and compliments Rey’s bargain bin dress before puttering off into the kitchen for their coffee.

Ben watches her go with an expression of judgement and aggravation.

“Don’t be rude.” Rey tells him. For a mobster, he’s always been oddly classist. It makes her wonder if his story of growing up in public housing and dropping out of high school is even remotely true.

“Rude?” He arches his eyebrows. “I hate to break this to you, but I kill people for a living.”

“That is a lie.” she says, primly. “You guard cargo shipments for a living.”  
The waitress returns with their coffee. “You folks made up your minds?” she gives Ben a disinterested once-over. It’s a look he’s probably never been on the receiving end of, and his reaction makes Rey clap both hands over her mouth to stifle a laugh.

“We’re ready.” she says, when she trusts herself to speak.

Ben drags a hand over his eyes. He really does look terrible. Even by the most sympathetic of standards, he can’t be considered handsome in any capacity.

“You alright, Honey?” the waitress asks him.

“Just bleeding through my gauze.” He says. “but other than that, just fucking dandy.”

Until this point, Rey had been intently focused on sliding one of the sweetening packets out of the middle of my tower without disrupting the stack.

“Oh for goodness sake.” she says. With a flick of her fingers, she topples the pile and packet scatter between them. “You were the one going on and on about keeping a low profile. Could you not have waited for us to get our food?”

“She doesn’t know what it’s from.” he says. “Far as she knows, I got my arm stuck in a hay baler.” he looks up to the waitress for confirmation. “I’m guessing that happens a lot around here?”

“This,” says Rey, with an accusatory jab of her finger, “Is why you are listed in my contacts as ‘arrogant prick.’”

“How is that arrogant?” he says. “I just assumed they had a lot of farming-related accidents around here. Can you tell me I’m wrong?”

“It was the way you said it. You think you’re better than them.”

“I think I’m better than most people.”

“You are the most obnoxious, entitled, angst-ridden person on the face of the Earth. Isn’t he, Polly?” Rey looks to their waitress.

“Hey, don’t bring her into this.”

“You’re the one who brought her into it!” says Rey. “Just because she gave you a weird look. And she was right too, because you do look absolutely _terrible—_ ”

“I’ll just have that right out for you, then.” says Polly, leaving them with their menus to retrieve the food they haven’t ordered.

Rey toys with her butterfly wedding ring and stares at the sugar packets scattered between them.  
“I’m sorry.” she says, at last. “I know you’re hurt, and I haven’t been very patient with you.” Without thinking too hard about it, she lets her hand cross the table and settle on his forearm.

He stares at her for a moment. Then he smiles. Laces their fingers together.

In that same moment, Rey sees their waitress out of the corner of her eye. She’s huddled close to the far wall on a landline, talking with her mouth behind her hand.

“Ben.”

“I see her.” He doesn’t look at all concerned. He rips a sugar packet open over his coffee.

“We need to get out of here.”

He takes a sip from his mug and makes a face. “Godawful, anyway. Ready to go?” He gets up with a grunt and Rey takes his hand to help him out of the booth. He doesn’t let go. Her hand disappears in his.

“Wait,” she says, reaching into the coin purse I’d picked up in the goodwill. “Okay. We can go.”

“Did you seriously just leave a tip?”

“Of course. That’s just good manners.”

“Excuse me,” Polly the waitress is calling them back. “Sir, Miss— could you please... stay where you are?”

Ben tugs her a little faster towards the exit. There’s a timid, nagging voice behind them. They slip outside in a clamor of wind chimes and hurry to the car. He unlocks it, and Rey climbs into the passenger’s seat.

She leans back with a huff, kicking her feet up on the dash because she knows how it annoys him. “I was _hungry_. I know you don’t feel well, but I have to eat at some point.”

“I know. I’ll get you something soon.”

“I want hash browns.” Rey puts her chin in her hand, so her head goes up and down as she talks. “And chicken and dill pickles and rolls without butter and an entire watermelon.”

“Rey.” she feels him lean towards her, but she won’t look at him. “I’m sorry.”

She grumbles. “For what?”

“For being an arrogant prick.” he says. He doesn't even hesitate. “And for screwing up our lunch plans.”

There’s a short-lived silence.

“Kid, come on. I’ll get you a lemonade.”

She gnaws on her lip and considers looking at him. “The real kind?”

“Course.”

“With ice?”

“What are we, European?”

Rey feels herself smiling. “ _And_ lunch?”

“Whatever you want.”

Sufficiently incentivized, she takes her feet off the dashboard. “Let’s go, then.”

He grins. He moves his hand like he’s going to touch her knee, but instead goes for the knob that controls the air conditioner. The one that doesn’t work.

He kicks the car into gear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. This is the definition of a slow burn. But we will get to the smut *eventually*. Thank you as always for reading <3
> 
> https://inspirationalmisquotes.tumblr.com/

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I know this one was short; more to come soon.


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